Marvel Chronology Project

Punisher's real name

Punisher's real name

Posted: Tue May 12, 2009 3:30 am

by wolframbane

The Punisher's real name has long been established as Frank Castle (born Castiglione). According to the Marvel Index #3, this was revealed in Punisher #1 (1986) with "Frank Castle. Born in Queens to Mario and Louisa Castiglione -- parents changed the name when he was six." I have two questions regarding his name.

1/ Marvel Index #3 also states Frank is short for Francis, but this was not in Punisher #1. Can anyone cite where and if he was named Francis on any other occasion?
2/ The errata for the Punisher entry in the OHOMU: Marvel Knights at:http://www.marvel.com/universe/OHOTMU:D ... 5#Punisher
states "Frank Castle has a middle name with the initial G." Can anyone cite where this is from?

Re: Punisher's real name

Posted: Wed May 13, 2009 12:15 pm

by JLH

I'm unsure on the other things, but I know for a fact he kept Castiglione until he went into the military. He only changed it to Castle so he could get around the limits of serving and re-up again. Which could mean Maria would've had to change her married last name...

Gerry Conway has admitted copying some ideas from the Mack Bolan novels, as well as "a little of the Shadow" in Marvel Vision#15.

http://mmmmmovies.blogspot.com/2009/01/ ... ay-no.html
"Basically, the Punisher always seemed to me a very direct rip-off of the Executioner, the lead character of a long series—eventually over three hundred of them—of pulp drugstore paperback books starting back in 1969. Mack Bolan was a Vietnam special forces vet, his family was killed by the Mafia, and used his combat skills to kill, ultimately, thousands upon thousands of mobsters. Frankly, I’m amazed there was any organized left in this country by the time he was done.

The Punisher was basically the Executioner, a murderous sorta-hero awkwardly inserted into the Comics Code-supervised Marvel Comics superhero universe back in a 1974 issue of The Amazing Spider-Man. It wasn’t until later, when Wolverine of the X-Men confirmed a taste for anti-heroes, that the Punisher started getting his own series (and by now he’s had quite a few). In these the superhero aspects of the universe were downplayed in favor of often baroque but straighter killing-the-gangsters stuff. I’ve never really been sure why Marvel was never sued over the Punisher. Perhaps he floated around so long as a minor character that when he hit it big, it was too late to retroactively sue for copyright violation".

The original Shadow had more than a little in common, attitude-wise, with writer Don Pendleton's popular (and much imitated) "Mack Bolan" character, whose bloody, one-man war against organized crime is chronicled in the EXECUTIONER paperback series. While I've never been overly enamored of Mr. Pendleton's creation, myself... even he deserved far better than the wholesale swiping of his conceptual mainsprings enacted by comics scribe Gerry Conway (during his lengthy tenure on Marvel's SPIDER-MAN series), re: The Punisher.

Quite simply: "Frank Castle" (a.k.a., The Punisher) was lifted, wholesale -- origin; motivation; and motif -- straightaway from the better-known (and immensely popular, at the time) EXECUTIONER series of novels. A man whose family is wiped out during a "mob" crossfire; the near-psychotic obsession with (and totemization of) "the holy, cleansing power of firearms"; the hag-ridden quest to rid the world of all gangsters, everywhere -- preferably, one bullet at a time. "And so" (in the words of the immortal Vonnegut) "it goes."

Stuff this shameless and opportunistic goes well beyond any reasonable definition of the word "homage"... particularly when the original creation (to say nothing of its author) is never afforded so much as a tipping of the hat by latter-day parvenus. Were I Mr. Pendleton's legal counsel... this sort of thing would have occasioned a hefty little lawsuit decades ago.